Payment company Visa is seeking to build a "muscle memory" to settlements, aiming to allow customers to convert digital assets to fiat currencies on its platform, according to the company's head of crypto division Cuy Sheffield at the StarkWare Sessions 2023.

"We've been testing how to actually accept settlement payments from issuers in USDC starting on Ethereum and paying out in USDC on Ethereum. So, these are large value settlement payments.", noted Sheffield in a fireside chat at the event.

According to the executive, global settlement with digital assets and fiat currencies is one of the avenues that Visa is investing in. He specifically stated:"That's been one of the areas where we want to build muscle memory. The same way that we can convert between dollars in euros on a cross border transaction, we should be able to convert between digital tokenized dollars and traditional dollars."

The payment giant has been exploring how to incorporate blockchain technology into its existing network to move money faster, but settlements still take place on the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, or SWIFT system, a not for profit cooperative society formed by European bankers with the purpose of facilitating secure and standardized transaction communication between its members.

Recently speaking at Visa’s annual shareholder meeting, former CEO Al Kelly briefly shared the firm’s plans for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and private stablecoins, claiming that "stablecoins and central bank digital currencies have the potential to play a meaningful role in the payments space, and we have a number of initiatives underway.”